Where do zoos get their animals from?
Zoos get the vast majority of the animals from other zoos. Zoos will ship animals to other zoos in order to keep blood lines fresh or if they need to move animals out of their zoo for a bit due to construction, having too many, etc, etc, etc. Sometimes animals come from the wild due to being orphaned or injured. Those animals are either kept or released depending on their condition. For example we had two eagles brought in that were both injured. Both were fixed up but the one was never able to fly again, the other was ok. One went back to the wild and the other stayed with us. Smaller stuff like fish, birds, insects are mainly purchased through private breeders. And small education animals such as snakes, opossum, etc sometimes also come from wildlife rehab centers. More often than not they are not injured, it is that they cannot be relased back into the wild because they have had too much contact. Nonetheless, the big stuff comes from other zoos.
